


The Man With Smoldering Eyes

by Hillsofuhhtennessee



Category: KISS (US Band)
Genre: Cake, F/M, Fire, Gore, Honestly kind of hard to tag this without too many spoilers, Horror, Intrusive Thoughts, Irrational Fear of Fire, Platonic Affection, Reader Death, Surreal, Tummy rubs, even this story includes those somehow, late 70s-early 80s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:15:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25213012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hillsofuhhtennessee/pseuds/Hillsofuhhtennessee
Summary: You meet a mysterious man with a piercing stare at a cafe one day and the two of you hit it off well. Despite his odd mindset about some things, he's genuinely very fascinating and intelligent even if he won't even reveal his real name or any details of his life. A strange companionship begins to blossom as you run into each other again the following weeks. But you can't escape your intrusive thoughts about him and you're haunted by dreams of your deepest irrational fear and his deep eyes. And slowly, they seem to leak out into the real world.
Relationships: Gene Simmons/Reader
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	The Man With Smoldering Eyes

That cafe had the best pastries. It wasn’t a daily habit, but you came by each week or two or when you were feeling particularly celebratory or upset for a treat. Presently, you’re eyeing up a large chocolate muffin. Still warm from the oven, the chips peppered throughout still half-liquid. A thin crust of sugar on top. Warm baked goods are something you don’t get often and you have a deep fondness for them. Your mother makes the best ones- she had once lived in a bakery and has no tolerance for store bought anymore. But you live hours from her now. And can’t bear to go near an oven. The radiating heat scares you and you can’t even bear to shove a tray of cookies into its hellish maw. You aren’t normally the timid type or one to fall victim to common phobias. But the paralyzing fear of fires and anything that can remotely start them engulfs you. 

The table shifts under a new weight. You look up. A man who wasn’t there before stares back at you. Broad, but not terribly athletic, just large-framed. The edges of his face are mostly covered by his long, dark, impressively frizzy hair. His facial features almost seem oversized with most of his forehead covered. His cheeks are soft and rounded, the creases around his wide mouth and full lips prominent even when straight-faced, his nose strong with a slight bump in the ridge. But the thing that strikes you most of all are his eyes. His heavy brows cast dark shadows over them. Like a gargoyle. His eyelids droop and give him a perpetually sleepy look. But beyond his dreamy expression, he has dark, piercing irises like Johnny Cash. They stare deep within you. You feel like you’re looking down an open manhole into the void. You can’t break eye contact or move.

While you’re transfixed, he slowly raises a large hand and flicks you in the side of the head. You snap out of it suddenly.

“You gonna eat that?”

He gestures at the muffin.

“What- No, that’s mine. I paid for it.”

“Didn’t look so interested a minute ago.”

You hastily scoop it up and take a bite. He’s still eyeing it. 

“Who are you? What do you want from me?”

He chuckles. His mouth grows even wider when he smirks.

“More than you could ever imagine, baby. But more than anything, I’m lonely. And you’ve got something about you. Good taste in sweets. All this fancy French crap here and you just go for a nice muffin. You can tell a lot about someone from little things like that, and that’s the kind of person I’d rather talk to. Just talk. No feelings, no strings attached, for all I care you can forget about me tomorrow.”

He has a low and strangely soft, neutral voice. Like an actor in an old movie or a news anchor. Something is peculiar about it that you can’t put your finger on. But talking to this mysterious man who psychoanalyzes people based on cake seems more interesting than your paperback. 

“Muffins are a ridiculous thing to judge someone on. Maybe I’m one of those croissant types you so despise and I’m just feeling experimental or self-hating today.”

“Ah, a challenge. Good. I hate weak people. But there’s no need to be so defensive. If you just wanted to have a taste of the cakes of the common rabble, you’d just get a smaller muffin. That thing’s the size of my fist. That’s a muffin lover’s muffin.”

“You’re sure obsessed with cake.”

“I’m a simple man. I crave the pleasures of the flesh. Cake included.”

He trails off into something under his breath, cutting it off. Some half-formed offhand comment about hunger. For someone who approached you over a damn muffin, he proves to be surprisingly interesting. He goes off on tangents about various details of his life. How he lived by a bakery in college, ate cake for breakfast every day and got fat. How he mistook cocaine for Sweet N’ Low once while trying to shed that weight. His family’s fascination at his fondness for devouring Wonder Bread straight from the bag and condiment obsession. The sheer array of jobs he’s worked, sometimes consecutively. And you go off on tangents about yours. Always cooking with a microwave since you can’t stand stoves. Your friends and coworkers teasing you for eating peanut butter sandwiches all the time despite being comfortably wealthy. The time you paid for your school field trip by buying out the entire case of chocolate they gave you to sell and getting months’ worth of candy for essentially free with that trip. You’re there for several hours, slowly nibbling away at your muffin as the two of you go on and on. 

But for all the random trivia he gives you, he won’t speak much of his family, his current job, his background, or even his name. You figure he’s some faceless announcer or radio voice, because of his peculiar speech pattern. That or a Soviet spy. He looks Eastern European enough you can’t count that out. Maybe he’s trying to get information out of you. But you don’t care, something about his personality just clicks with yours in a way few others have. His lack of emotional complexity. His often misconstrued bluntness and subtle naivety. You won’t just forget him tomorrow as he suggested. But the two of you eventually part. You didn’t finish the muffin after all, underestimating its sheer size. He’s happy to take the leftovers off your hands and devour them in a single gulp. 

You think of him as you go to sleep, thankful for that chance encounter.

You’re at your great aunt’s house. She wasn’t biologically related but loved you all the rest as a small child. Her face and form are murky. You were always her princess and she showered you with various little notes and gifts. She hands you a small wooden box and you open it. There’s a little fairy ballerina twirling around as mechanical music tinkles and a bracelet in the main compartment. It’s a cheap, chintzy thing, but in your child's eyes, the brightly colored fake gems are treasures. You hug her tight and warm. 

Now she’s playing piano, a song you don’t recognize. It’s heavy on the left hand with a strong bass countermelody. Beneath her perfume she has a noticeably smoky smell. She died of lung cancer when you were six. When you point it out she reminds you never to take up smoking. The color of her gaze burns until the dark eyes of that man are staring back at you. The smell becomes overbearing. It’s not just cigarettes anymore, but something chemical and foul. You look out on the porch and there’s an outdoor sofa utterly engulfed in flames. Your vision goes black as the toxic polyurethane fumes suffocate you in a few breaths. The last two notes she played repeat over and over. It’s a whining descending interval, like the siren of a European fire truck. 

You burst awake to an orange glow in the corner of the room. Just the light on a power strip. 

A week passes. You keep thinking you see wisps of smoke but shake it off. You’ve had such visions before out of paranoia and they’ve always been nonsense. You also keep thinking of that man. Of insulting him to his face. You can feel slurs and obscenities gripping your tongue like treefrogs on a window and feel sick whenever you open your mouth to eat, drink, or speak, afraid they’ll slide out. But you don’t even know what he is to insult him properly. They’re not sincere thoughts, they’re intrusive ones. The irrational screeching child of your mind babbling offensive nonsense impulses. It’s a problem you’ve had since at least middle school. Thankfully you’ll likely never see him again and you expect this to pass as his memory fades. 

You’re back there again. Can’t resist the sweets you’re so terrified of making. You’re digging into a slice of carrot cake when the muffin man saunters back over to you. You can feel your heart racing, but there’s a sense of calm when you look into his soulful eyes. The thoughts somehow melt away in his presence. You tell him about how your fear of fire has been haunting you lately, and the two of you go off onto your various childhood fears and traumas. How you were scared of giant whirling fans and massive hardware stores, especially when combined. And fair rides that went upside-down. Not to mention finding scorpions in your shoe. He nods in agreement at that last one. He still checks hats and dark places meticulously for spiders after a close encounter with one as a child. He also can’t bear the sight of identifiable chicken meat after watching one he’d befriended be slaughtered in front of him and run around headless. 

As mysterious as he is, you can’t deny the odd similarities between the two of you. Your eyes begin to warm to his face. He’s a bit of an ogre, especially when viewed from head-on, but he has a lovely side profile and his stark eyes and plush lips are enough to endear him to you. But you make no mention of it. Too many lovely platonic relationships have been ruined by such things. You suspect he’s married in his other life anyways. You still can’t decide if he’s a faceless voice or a spy in that life. Or perhaps both, an infiltrator secretly spreading propaganda over the airwaves. You eat your cake slowly. He devoured his while you were sharing what was gnawing at you. Throughout the conversation he mouths aimlessly. It’s seemingly his default idle motion. Usually it would be repulsive, but the soft fullness of his lips has you entranced. 

It’s freezing tonight and you’re buried under the covers, but the cold still stings into your bones. You’re numb and don’t want to move, but you can’t sleep. The heat isn’t working for some reason. You crawl out of bed and shuffle to the utility closet. There’s a space heater. You’ve never used one living on your own. You don’t even think you own one, but there it is. They’re one of those devices you’ve always been too scared to use, like stoves. There was a giant Victorian house you rode by on the way to and from school as a small child that was something of a landmark for you. Then one day it was utterly engulfed in flame, the heat radiating all the way to where you were on the road. The owner lived, but the house was reduced to a pile of ash. And of course, it was all due to a tipped space heater. That incident is the only rational explanation you have for this whole fear to begin with. 

Yet you take the space heater out of the closet, bring it to your room, and plug it in. A comfortable warmth fills you faster than you ever anticipated. It’s so cozy now. You crawl back under the covers where you’re even warmer and cozier. Usually you’re acutely aware of fire safety measures, but you never looked into those surrounding space heaters. If you were a lifelong vegetarian, you wouldn’t care about needing to cook chicken to proper temperatures or preventing cross-contamination when just never touching meat solved that problem. You comfortably slide into sleep, your body feeling warmer and warmer. You find yourself thinking of the muffin man again. He has such a sweet smile. His eyes melt from intense and a little frightening to genuinely gentle and loving when he looks at cake. His soft cheeks compress and you just want to squeeze them. You think about how his broad, soft-edged form would feel, not in any profane way, just a nice hug. Warm. Probably really warm and nice. Like how you feel currently.

You open your eyes to nothing but orange. The room’s on fire but you’re not panicking. You’re so comfortable. The pineapple bedposts’ scorched silhouettes stand stark black against the blaze. You can’t escape that man’s smouldering gaze. And the two-tone siren begins to whine, growing louder and louder.

You wake up now, in reality. The whining sound doesn’t stop. Your breath starts to race. It’s your smoke alarm. You leap up out of bed in panic, but relax as you realize it’s just low on batteries. You’re afraid to go back to sleep so you just sit in bed reading a book with the lamp on. 

Sleeping is getting hard with those two nightmares haunting you. Not so much the content, but the way you’ve awakened from both in such a panic. It feels like some kind of bad omen. Those thoughts you had about the man fade. Now you’re consumed by thoughts of physical desire for him. You’ve hardly seen his body and wouldn’t call him sexy, just oddly striking and endearing at best. But you keep thinking of feeling him in your mouth. Feeling yourself in his mouth, in his hands. You don’t want him that way. Who knows what diseases he has? You’re not even on birth control since you’ve been happily single. And again, he’s probably married in his other life anyways. Or at least has some sort of significant other. Why do you feel this odd tendril of resentment? You’ve only spoken to him twice and hardly know anything of real substance about him. These thoughts are only cut off by a sudden hot feeling on the surface of your bare skin. And that old phantom smoke sighting from last week. You just have to endure this. The thoughts often flare up after meeting certain types of men. It’s not as if you haven’t also had them cross your mind about teachers, coworkers, even family members. They’re all nonsense and eventually fade with exposure or avoidance. 

And once again, you find yourself in the cafe. He’s there, of course. He looks rough. Paler. His dark eye bags more prominent, his heavy eyelids even sleepier. The creases around his mouth deeper. His frizzy curls even more disheveled. He picks unenthusiastically at a barely nibbled cookie. 

“You don’t look so good.”

“I’m not. But it’s not contagious. You’re perfectly safe. I just went out for a walk to get some air and gravitated towards here as I often do. Can’t say you look much better.”

“Just having trouble sleeping. And a lot on my mind from work. It’ll pass soon enough.”

“Why don’t I slide around to your side so I’m not interrogating you for once?”

The bench sinks as he settles his weight down next to yours. He casually takes your hand from your side and places it on his belly. He’s soft. Not visibly fat (while clothed at least) but your fingers sink into his doughy middle. He guides your hands in slow circles and sighs in relief. It’s all so sudden and strange, but what hasn’t been about him? You don’t really mind in a way, though. It would be creepy with most people, but he’s cute and maybe there was a grain of truth to those thoughts you kept having about touching him. Not that far though. Just friendly affection. That conscious thought pulls out those unconscious ones as you realize you’re not that far from his crotch. His stomach growls and he perks up quickly. After ignoring it so long (by his standards at least) he grabs his cookie and devours it. He gives you a gentle smile.

“Thanks. That really helped a lot, you know.”

He chuckles at your look of slight embarrassment. 

He goes on to espouse the value of just going up and asking people for things. He refuses to give any specific examples, since they’re all from his other life, but tells you to just believe him on it. But apparently Jiminy Cricket makes him cry remembering how far he’s come since he was a child. He won’t say why or to what extent about that either. You’re willing to talk about some of the chance encounters in your life, though. How you got your current job by applying for grunt work in desperation and having your resume passed to another department. How you studied abroad thanks to an essay contest your father made you enter. You almost want to mention that first meeting with him, but hold back. You’ve grown to appreciate his odd companionship despite how much your mind tries to corrupt it. But you feel he’s trying to keep some distance and you won’t let insincere desires sour it. You’ve always been satisfied with the thought of being a spinster. Never even been one for most physical touch. 

You go to stand up and he catches you.

“Leaving so soon? Could you get me another cookie at least? I’ve been so hungry lately. People at work have been driving me mad, and I wouldn’t mind having a distraction for longer as well.”

And so you stay a while longer with him. You talk about your great obsessions in life. You’ve always been into mechanical amusement rides and roller coasters. Your parents didn’t let you ride them until you were 9 and you became absolutely obsessed with their enigmatic workings, alien forms, and bright colors. Similarly, he’s fascinated with TV and movies because of his sudden exposure to them at the same age and intrigue towards their alien worlds. 

You eventually part. He gives you a gentle smile

“See you next week”

That and his insistence to stay the first time make you wonder. 

You’re boiling noodles on the stove, on autopilot. How the hell are you doing this? You’ve maybe touched a stove once or twice in your life and handled it like it was a stick of dynamite. But you calmly stir, feeling the heat against your bare arms. Like you’re being possessed. On autopilot, you reach for the knobs and twist them, not in any rational way, just mindless wheeling around like a child in a toy car. You press all the buttons at random to see what happens, giggling wildly as things burn and melt and pop, feeling invincible. And then you look at your arm and see it burning away and melting, a meaty cooked smell filling your nostrils. You feel absolutely nothing and laugh at the mess. Your hands fall right off, exposing the white bone of your wrists against your blackened flesh. They stare into you and the stove beeps away. That fire siren sound. The dark patches in your now-burning bones sear into your mind against the white. Those damn eyes. Again. You should be scared, but it’s so predictable it’s starting to feel like a routine annoyance more than anything. Since his boundaries with you are dropping, you think about telling him about the dreams. He’d probably be flattered. 

The burning smell persists as you awaken in the real world where you can very much feel pain and don’t feel like you’re watching a movie of someone else playing you. You leap out of bed in panic, crouch down low, and make your way to the fire escape. Where you stop and groan with exasperation as you spy someone dejectedly holding a bagel, burnt to a total crisp. And that damn maniac proceeds to eat the thing. It’s 3 AM. What’s wrong with their life where they’re incinerating a bagel during the witching hour and eating it? What’s wrong with your life where you can’t bear to cook and have repetitive nightmares about foreign firetrucks and acquaintances you don’t even know the name of? 

You go through the motions of everyday life. You try to shake off your phantom peeps of smoke and brushes of heat as you keep convincing yourself that not every unpleasant thing you smell is smoke. And your intrusive thoughts about that man shift again as well. About murdering him. Pushing him off a balcony casually. Bashing his head in. Smashing a ceramic plate and cutting his throat. They’re just as insincere as your past thoughts about insulting him or screwing him. You couldn’t actually kill him. And they’re among the most common involuntary thoughts of all anyways. Everybody thinks about spitting over high ledges. Everybody becomes aware of how they could shove the nearby friend, family member, or random stranger over the edge. 

He looks even worse than last week. Even paler, his hair noticeably shorter and frizzier, his eyes bleary in their dark shadows, his lips drooping downward at their edges. It looks like someone turned up the contrast on him. He didn’t order anything but you can hear his stomach growling. You stare at the wood whorls and crumbs on the table in shame for what you’ve kept thinking. He doesn’t initiate conversation like usual, seemingly just content to be in your presence and too tired to think coherently.

“I’ve been having dreams about you. Mainly your eyes. Just staring at me as things burn down.”

He manages to smile a little.

“I get that a lot about me, it seems to be my most distinguishing feature. It was even worse when I was a kid. I’d sit there with my fat cheeks and Alfred E. Neuman ears, but if I wasn’t smiling I looked like a serial killer.”

“I looked like a monster. Had to have a bunch of my baby teeth pulled because my mouth was a mess so I had half-erupted front teeth for a time. At least I could hide it by smiling with my mouth closed. My sister looked like an ironed-out old granny.”

You struggle to hold a conversation for once. Probably because he’s so exhausted. You’re about to ask if he’s hungry but he opens his mouth first.

“Can I come home with you?”

You feel the heat rise through your face. Not something you expected. You’re not sure how to react. 

But on autopilot, the air escapes your mouth and your lips mouth involuntarily, taking the lead from your brain in spewing thoughtless thoughts.

“Yes”

And now the two of you are walking back to your apartment. He’s even holding your hand. You’re wondering why you’re doing this but you go on. Like Aurora climbing the stairs in the fireplace. But you feel so comfortable. His large hands are warm. He’s able to keep up with your rapid walking pace with his own slower, longer strides. Some of the color seems to return to his face in your presence. He’s wordless but his drained eyes look more contented than tired. He turns to you and smiles. His expressions are so mouth-focused and his cheeks so full that his smiles change his whole face and make you feel so cozy inside. Your worries and thoughts melt away in his presence. You climb into the elevator and press the button for your floor, your residual dread vanishing as it rises. You gaze into his eyes, which feel more soft than piercing now. Warm brown like wood paneling. They feel like home, and not the reappearing terror in your dreams. 

The elevator stops at your floor. Ding dong. Wait, isn’t it usually a monotone ding ding? Or at least a less dissonant major third like a doorbell? Your breathing becomes faster and heavier again, wondering what the hell’s going on. He squeezes your hand reassuringly and tugs you out of the elevator. It brings you back to reality. That weird bell was just your mind playing tricks on you, like it has with the smoke and smells. You’re probably just on edge from your sleep being messed up from all this. He leads you over to your door and waltzes you inside, leaning you over and pulling you into a kiss. 

You’ve only done it before during a Rocky Horror Picture Show virgin sacrifice. And once at New Year’s with a friend. Both just consisted of smashing your faces against each other because you were scared of what their mouth would taste like. But it’s different with him. You let him consume you, his soft full lips absolutely heavenly against yours, even parting them to let his tongue in, something you’d never even consider before. Your eyes are shut tight in his embrace and the warmth is rising in you again. Hotter than before, your mind starting to spin with delirium as he holds you tighter. 

And there comes that phantom heat against your skin. Searingly hot. For once, you ignore it, feeling so heavenly and secure in his embrace. You swear you smell smoke, but brush it off as well. You won’t let your head get in the way of your heart this time. You crack your eyes open to gaze into the depths of his.

And rip your lips away in horror. The heat’s not from him. The delirium isn’t from passion. The room’s ablaze and your lungs are filled with smoke. His smile shifts from gentle, sweet, and dreamy, to a squinting demonic sneer. He’s ghost white, his hair and clothes scorched black. He won’t let go. Your clothes burn away under his hands and the now bare skin of your thighs chars. As you scream in pain in your final moments, his pale face begins to burn from its orifices. His eyes shut and the skin from his sockets up his temples and forehead scorches black in hideous wings, their edges jagged and curled like burned paper. He burns from his nostrils along the bridge of his nose in two broad streaks connecting with those horrible eyes. His lips blacken and peel as he opens his wide mouth and lolls a hideously long tongue of fire, and his eyes reopen. His dark irises sear into your soul one last time before rolling back white. 

Perhaps it’s best that smoke inhalation is such a rapid death.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was both intended for those acutely aware of who the "muffin man" really is, and those with no idea and it's fascinating to see how similar the reactions are. Most of you are probably diehard KISS fans who caught most of the references but I'll still leave in the explanation of them. I avoided any really obvious stuff like references to putting ice in cereal or tongue flicking (at least until the end). The bit about the piano is a reference to his earlier songwriting tendencies. All those bizarre things he mentions are taken straight from his memoir. His appearance and mannerisms are based on how he looked in the late 70s-early 80s, and his secrecy on how the members of KISS hid their true identities then. The blur between him as man and monster is utterly fascinating to me, and the fire and mind control/possession themes that have always been heavily associated with his persona. The use of second person mirrors the lyrics of “God of Thunder”, like most of my other stories about him. But his relationship with the main character and desperation for conversation with someone is vaguely inspired by how he met Cher. Despite his reputation, I find him a fascinating and oddly sympathetic person and really wanted to show that here because I think it really adds to the betrayal and uncertainty. 
> 
> Of course, the story still works on its own without any context. It’s just as much an exploration of many of my personal problems as it is a more serious and realistic take on the Demon as a character. The themes of involuntary and uncomfortable obsession, things being too good to be true, chance encounters with strangers, being haunted by fear and uncertainty, etc shone through for both my diehard KISS fan and total outsider beta readers. Make of this story what you will. It means many things to me and could mean many things for you. I would absolutely love to hear what you think of it. 
> 
> The bit about the firetruck siren is actually just a bit of personal symbolism. I've always associated downward intervals like that with the dreidel song because I learned it in preschool (the owners were Jewish) and it seemed fitting given his heritage. Plus while American sirens are more obnoxious and imo effective, Euro style ones are creepier.


End file.
